Mary Ann Borer, a Pomona resident, and resident nerd, came up with a signature move during her five-day run on “Jeopardy!”: a daily hand signal.

As she was introduced for her second appearance, she spontaneously gave a two-fingered salute, like a peace sign held to her right temple. When host Alex Trebek entered, he returned the distinctive salute and asked, “Mary Ann, what’s that about?”

For her fifth appearance, not knowing a five-finger, science fiction-related gesture, she formed a heart with her hands.

My run on @Jeopardy ended Friday night. Thank you to everyone who watched me play! Being on #Jeopardy has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, and I hope I have inspired at least a few of you to chase your dreams! pic.twitter.com/UaXHdTiqzT

But she walked away — or flew, or teleported — with $88,500. “I’ll probably take a small vacation, then be boring and save and/or invest it,” she said.

A marketing coordinator for a credit union, Borer took the online “Jeopardy!” test in January and was called for auditions in August. All five games were taped on one day: Oct. 9.

Borer woke up at 3:30 a.m., drove with her boyfriend to Culver City and had time for a leisurely breakfast before the 7:30 a.m. briefing. Contestants then had time to rehearse onstage to become comfortable before taping began around 11 a.m.

Borer had few expectations of success against the returning champion. “I was so nervous,” she told me, “my right hand that holds the signalling device was shaking. Thankfully, you can’t see it on the show.”

She acquitted herself well, though, and the Final Jeopardy round made the difference. The category was children’s literature. As a lifelong reader and mother of two, she took a gamble, betting all but $200 of her $19,200 total.

“People always say, don’t do that,” Borer said. But she was in luck: The question involved “Paddington,” one of her favorite childhood books. She got it right, ending the game as champion with $38,200.

This meant she came back for the second show — only minutes later.

Each game lasted about 30 minutes, with a 15-minute break for everyone to change clothes — “to act like it’s a new day,” Borer said — and have their makeup touched up.

“We did three shows, broke for lunch and then did two more shows,” Borer said.

Was that a lot of pressure? Just the opposite.

“It’s a really fast-paced day. It’s a good thing they do it that way,” Borer said. “You don’t have time to worry.”

In the fifth game, she ran into trouble, came in second and was eliminated. The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. Olympic Cities, not her strong suit. As she said, “The categories either work for you or they don’t.”

Her day ended at 5 p.m. and she and her boyfriend made the long drive back to Pomona in rush-hour traffic. She felt elated, not defeated.

“Ever since I was a kid, it was a dream of mine to get on ‘Jeopardy!’” Borer said. “I had so much fun that day. It was the greatest day of my life, without question. The whole staff, the security guards on up, were really kind and friendly.”

Her appearances didn’t seem real, she said, until they were on TV weeks later. Watching the episodes in real time, however, proved challenging.

After her Nov. 5 debut, the second episode, bumped due to election coverage, aired at 2 a.m. Nov. 7.

Further appearances were interrupted by “Jeopardy’s” Teen Tournament series for two weeks — making the prohibition on sharing how she’d done all the more awkward — before resuming on Thanksgiving. Her final appearance, last Saturday, was partly pre-empted by a college football game.

Her co-workers were rooting for her, playing her episodes in the lunch room for those who hadn’t been able to catch them live.

Originally from Texas, Borer, 43, moved to La Verne in 2000 — “I fell in love. It didn’t work out, but oh well,” she said of her relocation — and then to Pomona in 2009 after the condo she was renting was sold. She rents an apartment where she lives with her daughter, 15, and son, 13.

Is she a local celebrity? Not exactly. Only friends and people at work or at her synagogue, Temple Beth Israel, seem to know she was on “Jeopardy!” At her apartment complex or at the grocery store, nothing.

“Nobody has recognized me in the wild,” she joked. “I guess the makeup must have worked.”

Whether she’s widely recognized or not, we salute her — with two, three or four fingers.

Since 1997, David Allen has been taking up valuable newsprint and pixels at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he is a columnist and blogger (insidesocal.com/davidallen). Among his specialties: city council meetings, arts and culture, people, places, local history, dining and a log in a field that resembled the Loch Ness monster. The Illinois native has spent his newspaper career in California, starting in 1987 at the Santa Rosa News-Herald and continuing at the Rohnert Park-Cotati Clarion, Petaluma Argus-Courier and Victor Valley Daily Press. A resident of Claremont who roots for the St. Louis Cardinals and knows far too much about Marvel Comics, the Kinks and Frank Zappa's Inland Valley years, he is the author of two collections of columns: 'Pomona A to Z' and 'Getting Started.'